Setting up possible legal battles in Orange County and other urban areas, the California Supreme Court on Monday struck down sex offender living restrictions in San Diego County.

Approved by voters statewide in 2006, the restrictions aimed to create “predator free zones” by banning sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of schools and parks.

Four San Diego parolees challenged the constitutionality of the restrictions, arguing the zones effectively walled off most housing options and undermined public safety by forcing offenders into homelessness.

More than 97 percent of rental housing in San Diego County became unavailable to the offenders, and law enforcement officials logged a rise in offenders registered as “transient,” according to court documents.

Ruling unanimously in favor of the parolees, the Supreme Court said the restrictions in San Diego were “harsh and severe” and produced “conditions that hamper, rather than foster, efforts to monitor, supervise and rehabilitate these persons.”

“It bears no rational relationship to advancing the state’s legitimate goal of protecting children from sexual predators, and has infringed the affected parolees’ basic constitutional right to be free of official action that is unreasonable, arbitrary, and oppressive,” the written opinion by Justice Marvin R. Baxter said.

State parole and Orange County probation officials, who monitor hundreds of local sex offenders, said they were reviewing the court ruling and were unable to comment Monday.

Baxter’s written opinion focused heavily on the circumstances in San Diego County and did not expressly address sex offender housing restrictions statewide. But legal experts and proponents of the housing restrictions said the ruling could have broad consequences.

Parks and schools are often sprinkled throughout urban neighborhoods, leaving little room for sex offenders to live outside restricted zones. Entire cities in Orange County fall within the zone.

“It substantially weakens the housing restrictions,” UC Irvine Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky said of the ruling. “What the California Supreme Court says is a local government can’t have a sex offender ordinance that leaves sex offenders with no place to live. Blanket bans are unconstitutional.”

However, the court left open applying the restrictions in San Diego County on a case-by-case basis, Chemerinsky said.

Former state Sen. George Runner, who co-authored the 2006 ballot initiative known as Jessica’s Law, said the ruling was a win for “sex offenders and child molesters.”

“I’m less concerned with the liberties and freedoms of a sex offender than I am of an innocent child,” Runner said. “No one is ever going to convince me that Californians think it is OK for a child molester to live across from a school.”

Runner said the next step for Jessica’s Law proponents may be loosening the restrictions, so local governments can create their own distances rather than rely on the blanket 2,000-foot zone.

Jessica’s Law became a lightning rod of criticism in Orange County last year following the arrests of two homeless sex offenders under state and federal supervision. Prosecutors say the men kidnapped, raped and murdered four sex workers in a string of attacks; they’ve pleaded not guilty.

Tony Saavedra is an investigative reporter specializing in legal affairs for the Orange County Register. His work has been recognized by the National Headliner Club, the Associated Press Sports Editors, the California Newspaper Publishers Association, the Orange County Trial Lawyers Association and the Orange County Press Club. His stories have led to the closure of a chain of badly-run group homes, the end of a state program that placed criminals in inappropriate public jobs and the creation of a civilian oversight office for the Orange County Sheriff's Department, among other things. Saavedra has covered the Los Angeles riots, the O.J. Simpson case, the downfall of Orange County Sheriff-turned felon Michael S. Carona and the use of unauthorized drugs by Olympian Carl Lewis. Saavedra has worked as a journalist since 1979 and has held positions at several Southern California newspapers before arriving at the Orange County Register in 1990. He graduated from California State University, Fullerton, in 1981 with a bachelor of arts in communication.